By the way, I'm in total agreement with you on all the distance concepts and measurements inside of our galaxy. It's really only when we get to the topic of the physical cause of photon redshift that we'll need to discuss the implications with respect to distance.
Dad and I rarely see eye to eye in astronomy, so I doubt you two will either because I'm pretty liberal with respect to interpretation of celestial events, but his beliefs don't seem particularly logical with respect to astrophysics.
I think that he sincerely believes what he says, even if it sounds rather unbelievable at times.
We need to also be sure that our kids remain a little skeptical to all claims too. In the field of psychology, there's a lot of concepts that aren't necessarily valid for every single individual, and not all ideas are easily reproduced apparently. In the fields of medicine I would argue that it's come a very long way to producing useful and tangible benefits in our lives. Even still, there are drugs that have made it to the market, only to have horrific side effects, and then yanked off the market again. Science does make mistakes at times. It's important to understand the risk factors too, and not be naive.
I think that dad should resist being too smug about it however. It's also very easy to make stuff up in religion as evidenced by all the various religions. Some might argue that dads beliefs about the physics of the universe are not even "scientific", which is frankly his own little personal trump card with respect to the outcome of this particular thread IMO.
If it's any consolation to you, I think if dad and I were ever to have a theological discussion about religion, it would probably be just as bad.
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